Savages (2024) NYICFF 2025

SAVAGES is a scathing animated adventure film with a dark side and a biting social commentary. It’s a film that shows that some filmmakers trust the children in the audience to deal with weighty subjects.

The film follows a a young girl who lives on a planation in Borneo. Her father works for the company that is logging the jungle bare. When they witness the members of a crew kill an ape, they rescue the baby and take it home. Things become complicated when the girls cousin arrives from the jungle to go to school. When he flees civilization she gives chase. Eventually she ends up in conflict with the loggers.

This is a very adult film from the director of MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI. It’s a film with death and real world consequences for actions. While it tones things down a bit, there is real danger of things going badly. Things are not sugar coated to nonexistence.

That said, while it’s a good film and one I admire, I’m still not sure what I think of it. The tone is a bit uneven and the ending seems like unearned wishful thinking. The film should have hit me harder.

Still its good enough on its own terms and far enough removed from Hollywood crap that the film is highly recommended.

HEEBIE JEEBIES at NYICFF 2025

I was lucky enough to go to the only screening of HEEBIE JEBIES at NYICFF. It was packed and a blast.

HAIRY SCARY is one of the Gleeful Beast shorts filling the festival. 

JUST LITTLE IMPS is about a young girl who knows there are monsters in the dark. It's funny with a great denouncent.

HAUNTING CALL OF A MAJESTIC BEAST a monster yells for Steven. Another Gleeful Beast short

BUG this is a mostly great film. Its the story of a father and daughter when a bug arrives. Its a film that works until the ending.

IMPOSSIBLE MALADIES is the story of a doctor specializing in weird diseases in the 18th century. I want a feature film

A GUEST FROM ELSEWHERE is the story of a beast looking for connection. It's a good film that is a bit derivative

JEREMY WHERE IS THE LIFE JACKET- funniest of the Gleeful Beasts films if you love Monty Python style humor. I hurt myself from laughing.

PASOS PARA VOLAR - one of the absolute best films has two birds trapped in a house. Films like this is why going to NYICFF is a must

FISH RIVER ANTHOLOGY what if Stephen Sondheim wrote music like Stepehen King? Dead fish sing in a creepy ghoulish and funny tale

ROGER IS AWAKE - another wicked Gleeful Beast tale about a man waing up from a medical procedure which made a gruesome discovery. Another attempt by NYICFF to kill me via laughter

UNDERGROUND a wicked little film that has a glorious denouncement about what is going on after being buried alive

DOLORES a creepy nightmare of a film that has a little girl enter a field of corn and meeting two evil mummies. You will never see armadillos the same again.

A CAPTURED LOOSE-LEAF STEVEN this Gleeful Beasts chilled the audience, It kind of funny but truly disturbing.

LONG JOURNEY- This is a mostly good film about a boy being sent on a scavenger hunt by his mom. Its a great film until the denouncement which completely changes the mood.

The Legend of Ochi (2025) NYICFF 2025

An ADDENDUM before we start:

This piece has gone through several drafts each one stripping  away the discussion and leaving just a list of grievences, making me wonder if I should have posted this for Festivus. It wasn't unintentional it was something that just happened.  The reason it happened was that I have been trying to explain my feeling for this film and it's gone from a simple "I like it but it's a mess" to more iterations until now where I realize that I am angrily disappointed in this film - almost everything works - I mean it looks great, the cast is there, the creatures are awesome- but the script is so lacking in characters and reasoning that the narrative thread snaps from the first instant- we are never told anything that gives us a backstory of what is happening or why; nor do we get real characters but line drawings (I won't insult the notion of sketches).  There is a sense that the director knows it all (this could have been a 5-hour film) but he just doesn't show it or thinks that his target audience of six-year-olds will never notice. And the fact that so much seems to be missing pisses me off because this should have been a truly awesome film that lived in my heart forever and instead it's become a piece of junk I want desperately to break apart so that someone will rescue the tale and tell it the right way, with real reasons and real characters that aren't lazily drawn to the point none of them make sense. I want the film that the pieces promise not this broken doll with its limbs and head chopped off. I should not have had to spend 100 plus minutes spending each one asking about why and what and how. I should have drifted off on the story. And because this film doesn't explain anything-internally nothing makes sense - I am left with not so much a review but an abbreviated list of questions about things I should never have noticed.

I apologize but this film broke my heart (I mean look at the Ochi they are so damn cool)

THE REVIEW

Ever since I saw THE LEGEND OF OCHI at NYICFF my friends were asking what I thought of the film.  I wasn't sure what to say. Should I tell them how good the film looks? Or should I talk about the grand operatic score? Or should I tell them the creatures are very well done.?

Did I say any of that? No.What I said was simply "It's a mess"

I don't care that the director said he made the film for kids, the film makes no sense.

The film takes place on the island of Carpathia which is in the Black Sea. The island is shared by a group of people and some big blue creatures called ochi which occassionally kill the live stock and the people. The people, lead by Willem Dafoe, hunt the ochi. WHen Dafoe's daughter finds a small ochi she decides to  return it to its family.  This doesn't sit well with he father assumes she has been kidnapped and wih his band of lost boys goes to find rescue her.

I don't know where to start but while the film looks great the rest of the film really is a mess.

I don't know if the script was as much of a mess as the film is, but I sure hope not. Nothing in the film is explained or hangs together. I have no impressions of the film,  I only just an endless list of a questions and plot problems. Raymond Chandler said that an audience will forgive one, perhaps two unexplained turns (one of the shootings in THE BIG SLEEP is never explained), but more than that you will lose the audience. OCHI is full of unexplained turns and questions requiring answers. Here is a brief list of some of them:

- Is this a serious film or comedy? Willem Dafoe is so far over the top and his delivery is so out there I didn't now if I was supposed to be laughing or not. It seems like a comedy but no one was laughing.

-There is no real back story. We are told the monsters and the people are on the island and they don't get along, but there is no effort to explain what exactly happened. This leaves us with no idea why is Dafoe is such a homicidal nut job.

-There is no explanation of the monsters. NONE.  The bits we know- that they live in the woods... er caves on the island and hunt live stock makes no sense.  They are animals, until they aren't.

-There is no character development. NONE. We have no idea who anyone is. We kind of have a vague sense of the three leads were a family, but beyond that we have nothing. This is especially interesting since the band of boys who hunt with Dafoe are given prominence on the poster, but all we now is that they cast offs from families and orphans. We know nothing  about any of them except that one of them speaks with a Brooklyn accent (his only line). (And why does their look make them seem more like thugs/ fascists  then kids?)

- A terrium of catepillars? With no top and no sense that they will be butterflies?

-Everyone speas with a different accent, and language. Dafoe speas like himself, Helena Hengel speaks with a scandanavian accent and Emily Watson speaks with an accent from Mars. One boy sounds like he is from Brooklyn. The music played on the radio is in a variety of different languages. The guy who has his car stolen speaks in a Slavic language.

-Emily Watson knows all this information about the ochi, but we don't now how. She allegedly taught her daughter words of the ochi, but we don't know anything. She know where they live but she never saw the paintings in the cave. She ran after her daughter... and brought her flute?

- When the daughter the daughter realizes she can speak ochi the film is subtitled...just for that one scene.

- Why does travel across the island takes however along it requires the plot.

-We have no sense of anyone on the island other then Dafoe and the related characters. There is no sense of the society living there even though we see them. Why did they send their kids to Dafoe? What about school? 

-There is no reason that Dafoe goes from a psychotic Peter Pan to loving father.

-Why does one of Dafoes boys break into the house and trash the place when they are just there to see if the daughter is there? (There is a whole line of questioning here about the society where this happens, why they can misbehave and why they cross the line from being thugs to being de facto fascist soldiers)

- What is the deal with the Petro character? One minute he's good soldier, the next he's kind of sweet on the daughter and the next he's being a bad guy again...until he's not. This just highlights that no one arcs and no event naturally happens things just happen because the director says so.

There is more, much more. Almost every moment in the film will have you asking questions. I took pages and pages of notes much to amusement of the people sitting a couple of seats down the row.

This film feels like it was a thousand-page novel and it was cut to a fraction of that length.

Weirdly the film kind of works (as long as you don't think about it). The reason is the score which does all the heavy lifting by cueing us to what we are supposed to feel. The film is so cliched in construction and the score works so well that even if you have noticed all the missing material the end still will make you weepy- why? Because the score fixlls in all the holes.

Is it a bad film? Objectively, oh yea. The narrative just doesn't work. But emotionally... it kind of does at least enough that if you can let the music carry you to where you are five years old and don't know about plot holes.

Ultimately this film pisses me off more than any film has in the last year or so. Why? Because so much of the film works, the visuals, the music, the creatures... that the complete failure of the script to work  is a freaking shame. Had it worked it would have been an instant classic, instead its a major disappointment... a disappoint will even hit the film's five year old fans once they are old enough to ask questions.

HOMECOURT (2024) NYICFF 2025

This is a look at high school basketball phenom Ashley Chea as she goes through her final three years  in school and as she looks to head to college.

Sadly HOMECOURT disappoints. The weakest sports doc I’ve seen in quite sometime  the film fails to give us any sense of Ashley as anything other than a basketball player. While we know her family came from Cambodia and that her parents worked long hours to give her a shot at basketball stardom, we know very little about her as a person. Honestly we know more about her coach than we do about Ashley and her family.

This is a very bad thing because Ashley comes off as whiny foul-mouthed brat. This is not because she is but be cause we don’t see much other than her on the court where she curses like sailor and gets upset when things don’t go her way.  Yes we see her smile  when she is visiting colleges but we don’t see much beyond that. She goes out with friends but we never see it.

The film also suffers from the poor basketball sequences. There is little attempt to put the games into perspective or give us an idea as to who we are watching. This gets confusing in the final third when Ashley and he teammates are making a run for the championship and we see a lot of teams in locations and uniforms that all look similar.

What exactly are we watching? It’s not always clear.

While not bad, the film never gets up to speed. Too much is left unsaid or under explained.

We should have been cheering and yelping at the final credits not politely golf clapping before walking out.

SHORT FILMS ONE NYICFF 2025

THE WIND IN YOUR HAIR and THE SMOOTH BRAINED LUMMOX are two more Gleeful Beasts and are simply delights.

GUGUSSE a man in a car who is trapped in a traffic jam has an encounter with a bird.  This film is so much fun.

SILK WINGED SNART- another Gleeful Beasts short- just see it (it's less than a minute)

MOLE,MOLE- a woman who lives with a mole tries to find a way to get him to go out and see the world. I love the look of this film but I don't think it really works.

THE NIGHT TUNNEL-a boy at a beach digs a tunnel to somewhere else. This is a wickedly cool that goes and changes and makes you smile.

CAPYBARAS- a family of capybaras in the wild meet some chickens on a farm and it's wonderful.

THE GIRL WITH THE OCCUPIED EYES - young girl can't see the wonders around her because she is always on the cellphone- an obvious point made glorious by the things happening around the young girl.

THE CONSTRUCTOR- a young girl with the sense of the world of a middle aged philosopher explains her love of Lego and why her sister annoys her. It's amusing but feels a little too staged.

THE SMALL GARDEN BY THE WINDOW this is a great looking film that I have no idea what it's about.

KONIGIRI: CONNECTED the return of the sushi critters who discover the internected nature of the world.

HELLO SUMMER- a delightful film about a family going on vacation.

Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window (2024) NYICFF 2025

The film begins  before after the start of Japanese war with America, the film follows you Toot-chan as she bounces from school to school. She bounces because her bubbly personality gets her into trouble with teachers. Eventually settling into a school where some classes are held in train car Totto-chan begins to  thrive. The film follows her life from 1940 until her family flees the city because of American bombing.

This is in episodic tale that follows as the young girl builds a a group of friends and changes the lives of everyone she comes in contact with. This is especially true of  one introverted boy with polio who only wanted to read. Totto gets him into the swimming pool and to climb up trees, places he never thought he could go.

This is a wonderful film with a dark undercurrent, it's a film about the joys of being a kid even though adult danger is just out of the frame. This makes it a film with some odd shifts in tone. It helps that this is from the point of view of a first grader so she is shielded from a lot and the film doesn’t need to explain. 

If the film has any flaws it comes in the handling of some of the darker bits. The death of one character is foreshadowed right at the start, and the integration of the war images are not as well integrated as the might have been. They are excellently done but their placement into the film feel less than natural. The use of Uncle Tom’s Cabin feels less than natural, especially since Totto-chan and her family can’t use American terms lest they be suspected of being spies.

Ultimately these are minor quibble since the film largely soars and ends up being great times with great characters.

Highly recommended

SHORT FILMS TWO NYICFF 2025

 Brief thoughts on the films in NYICFF's Short Films Two

GOTTLEFLOBS WOBBLEBOTTOM- one of the many Gleeful Beasts shorts playing the fest. This one about a monster that wants to do westend musicals-but always eats the audiences. Wickedly fun.

THE REFUSERS- grand movie musical about trash. This is glorious.

TEMOLO - a deaf boy who loves the feel of loud rock music has to spend time with his jazz musician father who can't connect to him. This is a great story looking for a longer form (this needs to be a feature). It suffers by having almost no backstory, which limits character development. We don't know who these people are really.  This feels like a proof of concept more than a finished film. While the end works, this film is so sketchily told, it's just a series of moments, that we end up knowing the end near the start.

SPARROWS- a meditative story of a young monk chasing a sparrow and how it reflects the arc of his life. It's a lovely film that parents will get more out of than the kids.

DRIFTING GUITAR this is a lovely story of a weasel who travels around selling ties who meets a hedgehog and debates his future and the notion of home. While the film rambles around it all comes together in the end to be something special.

Thoughts on the MOOMINVALLEY 2025 NYICFF edition

The Moomins collection playing this year’s NYICFF is the final bunch of episodes. If you have been watching them for the past 7 years where they have been some of the best attended and received screenings at the festival you know what to expect.

MOOMIN PAPA THE GREAT EXPLORER has Papa and his son sailing off to rescue Jaxter, a friend of Papa. Meanwhile Mama and Mai try to put together a heater to warm the house.  It’s a solid entry in the series and will make you smile.

SONG OF THE GROKE has Mai and Snork  maiden going off to confront the Groke (a dark beast that freezes everything it touches) about how it is destroying their flowers. Meanwhile everyone else is in a tizzy because they think there is a vampire in the valley. While this is a good episode the stories seem repeatious from earlier tales. The switching between bits also feel like this was two shorter tales stuck together just because.

MOOMINPAPA AND AUNT JANE has the woman who raised Moominpapa showing up because she is upset because she got an envelope of bad words…but she thinks it’s a trick to get her there for a surprise party (its actually a book launch party for Moominpappas memoirs). It’s a good episode though it has so much going on that you kind of wish it was a feature unto itself because some great pieces are cut short.

As a;ways it was great to have Moomins at the festival. The question is what will they do next year. My suspicion is that they will be looking more closely at the Moomin features that have been released elsewhere in the world but which have not played here in America.

Ultimately it’s a must for Moomins fans.

Maya, Give Me a Title (2025) NYICFF 2025

Michel Gondry’s latest film is pure joy.  A collaboration between himself and his daughter, Maya. The film is a series of short animated film he made for her while they were separated. She would suggest a title and he would use his phone and colored paper to make a story based on that. Gondry connected the films with the story of how they came together.

This film is absolute magic. It’s a film full of childlike wonder and deep love.

Telling stories of earthquakes, mermaids, cops and robbers and so many other things this is truly a film where anything can and does happen. Trust me there is no way to tell where any of the stories go. I sat in wide eyed wonder , my chin on the back of the seat in front of me  with my mouth hanging open.- THIS is why we go to the movies.

It is also why Gondry is one of the great filmmakers of our age.

I can not recommend this film highly enough.

And if you don’t like it Phooey on you.

SHORTS FOR TOTS NYICFF 2025

Quick word on the SHORTS FOR TOTS selectiona at this years NYICFF

ANIMANIMUSICAL- Julia Ocker returns to NYICFF with the story of animals singing together and having a parrot insist on being the lead. It's fun

SPLISH SPLASH SPLOSH- Lily Ward bursts on to the scene witha charming film about two friends, Jeremy and a worm named Wobblywoo out in a rainstorm.  This is an absolute delight that portends a great future from a great filmmaker

DANCING IN THE RAIN- ths film has a young girl drifting off on a hot day and imagining (?) herself in the rain. By the time the mice are doing water ballet you will be smiling like a crazy person.

RONNY A CROCUMENTARY- a frog narrates a documentary about a crocodile who wants love...it's a wicked send up of nature shows.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN DRAGONVILLE - a dragon with small wings meets a young boy and together they manage to do something wonderful.

MOJAPPI:IT'S MINE - three bad guys try to steal a pancake. Pure slapstick fun.

TIDDLER- this is the story of a young fish who tells a different story everyday- that not everyone believes but they all love. This is a long film that is alternately is wonderful and a bit repetative. If this was trimmed a bit it would be great. I loved the late in the game line " A story led me home"

Lily Ward at NYICFF 2025 - a report on an impromptu meeting

I met animator Lily Ward today at NYICFF. Her film SPLISH, SPLASH, SPLOSH! was playing in Shorts for Tots and afterward she was in the lobby getting mobbed by the kids who wanted to know how it was done. (The film is a lovely tale of two friends out in the rain a review soon)

The interaction and need to engage with her was exactly the same as I saw Nick Park do a meet and greet for the latest Wallace and Gromit film. She handled the mob of kids like a pro- explaining everything to the kids in such away that they were informed and desired to try it for themselves. Seriously Ward made every kid feel special and leave wide eyed.

I asked Ms Ward about the Aardman Academy and the next thing that happened was I was doing an impromptu and unrecorded interview. She answered all my questions no matter how mundane (how big were her sets? About the size of one of the folding tables) or run of the mill (What made you want to do animation-certain children's shows I did not write down. After animating as a kid, she went to film school where her passion for animation was re-ignited.)

The answer to the Aardman Academy question is that it's program that Aardman runs to help animators make better films. The animators are given mentors and access to tools and are turned loose on their project. Lily said she worked on SPLISH SPLASH SPLOSH for eight months and did all the animation. It was largely just her doing the actual animation. The puppets bend. The faces were animated by changing the facial features with features held in place by pins. 

The characters are Jeremy and Wobbbly Woo. She is currently working on trying to get the characters to carry over to a series. 

Talking to Ward was special. She is a passionate filmmaker who knows what she wants to do. She has the fire in her belly the way that some of great young filmmakers I've spoken with have had.  She reminded me of Dommee Shi when I spoke with her at Tribeca, right before she won an Oscar for BAO and went on to direct TURNING RED.  Two minutes into speaking with her you know she's the real deal and you know she's going to do wondrous things.

You need to keep an eye out for Ward's work  both now (SPLISH SPLASH SPLOSH is playing in the TOTS collection which plays the next two weekends at the festival) and in the future.

Hola Frida (2024) & GO MY WAY (2024) NYICFF 2025

André Kadi & Karine Vézina's HOLA FRIDA is a look at the childhood of Frida Kahlo, of the onset of the illness that would confine her to bed for long periods and the flights of imagination that would inform her painting.

This is the third film in three years from director Kadi whose DOUNIA films played the festival the last two years. It's also the weakest. This isn't to say it's bad, rather it's not as compelling as the earlier films.  The reason for this is simple, in the earlier films Kadi had a strong narrative to keep us interested. We were following a young girl as she went from war torn Syria to Canada. Here we have the life of a little girl as she is struck down with polio and recovers. The narrative is very loose and as a the result the film never builds momentum out side of the sequences. Honestly until you get the time jump forward of the day of Kahlo's near fatal bus accident this could have been anyone's story. It also doesn't help that some of the sequences which are wonderful on their own, don't build to anything (The imaginary friend/death sequences, while some of the best sequences in the film seem to belong in a longer different film, here they feel just dropped in. Then again Kadi had issues with the blending of reality and magic in his earlier films)

Again this isn't to say the film is bad, it's not, its a bright and beautiful coming of age tale. The problem, at least for me is that the director's earlier two films were so much more compelling that HOLA suffers from a mental comparrison. I know you aren't supposed to do it, but it happened.

Definitely worth a look.

The other problem with HOLA FRIDA for me was that it played with the short GO MY WAY which kicked me to the curb and made me cry in its seven minutes. The film is the story of a young girl who likes a boy who won't notice her. Her friends suggest she make changes to herself to be noticed only to find she lost herself. She changes back, but it's a magnificently told tale about why we need to be ourselves and not lose ourselves to please other people.  It is one of the best films of NYICFF this year and one of my favorites of 2025.  I couldn't stop thinking about it during the feature- which isn't a good sign.

The film plays again with HOLA FRIDA and in both the GIRLS POV and HOLA CINE sections which means those are now must sees just because GO MY WAY is in them.

the wonderfully wicked QUOTA (2024) is playing NYICFF in Shorts 3

This is my review from Toronto-with it hitting NYICFF in Shorts Three here is a repost-buy a ticket and go

Wicked short film about everyone being told that they now must watch their carbon output which will be monitored by a phone app- and what happens when it runs out.

This is a very clever little film with a nasty sting in its tale. Running a breezy three minutes it’s kind of hard to write on since there isn’t much I can say without spoiling it.

That said, this is destined to be kicking around the festival circuit so definitely make an effort to see it.

¡Salta! (Jump!) (2024) NYICFF 2025

It's 1989, Oscar and Teo are two brothers trying to figure out what happened to their mom. She was a famous scientist workng on wormholes and she disappeared one day.  Oscar is trying to work out whee she is. Teo is running around, sneaking out and being ten. Teo finds a wormhole and passes through it-and right into 2022. Teo is shocked to find his brother old, and his grandmother older. Oscar is rocked by the return of his still younger brother. Oscar knows that he has to send Teo back, but to do it they have to find a new wormhole.

Charming science fiction film doesn't break any new ground but at the same time it is extremely entertaining. I smiled and laughed my way though the film.

The reason the film works is the cast is letter perfect. We not only believe everyone on screen, we also like them. This point is key to accepting the two actors play Oscar. We need to believe that the young actor will grow up to be the older one and we do.

The film also benefits from a audio cassette powered 1980's soundtrack. The music is a mix of songs you really know and some you haven't heard in ages which sells the whole affair since we wouldn't just hear the big hits in 1989.

This is a sweet little film. Being able to find a sweet little film like this is the reason that I love NYICFF.  They schedule these wonderful off the radar films that you walk out of and want share with friends and family. Do yourself a favor and buy a ticket for the screenings this weekend and next.

Recommended.

You must see LIVING LARGE (2024) when it plays NYICFF 2025 this weekend

Trust me you are going to love this film. WHen I saw it last year I was certain that NYICFF would show it and I was right. This is film is one of the best films you will see all year so buy a ticket and go see it.

LIVING LARGE is one of the best films of 2024. It is one of the best films about growing up and being fat and trying to survive with friends I have ever seen. It’s a film that is so emotionally right that I was sobbing from  finally seeing my life on the screen.

This film is just glorious.

The film is the story of 12 year old Benny. His parents are divorced, puberty hit and he started to gain weight. He loves to cook and he loves to make music with his friends. As he gains weight the people around him try to help him lose weight, but it’s tough.

This film just works from top to bottom. It’s got great characters, fantastic music and sense of life that sucks you in. It’s a film that caught me unaware. I say this because it started and I wasn’t certain it was going to be my cup of tea, then the song began and I warmed up, and then Benny said “We’re at the age where when we get thrown out of the play ground we have no where to go.” And I fell head over heels in love with the wisdom.

This is just a great film and it kills me because it isn’t Disney or Pixar or from Japan and as a result it may get lost in America and other parts of the world. People don’t gravitate toward films like this and it’s a sin. This film is light years beyond what Disney and Pixar is doing. It packs a punch that goes in your gut and stays there.

I absolutely love this film

A must see.

Winners (2024) NYICFF 2025

This is the hidden gem of this years NYICFF. This is sort of film that I go to the festival to find- an off the radar delight that moves into my heart.

The film is the story of Mona, a Kurdish girl who fled the war in Syria and ended up in Germany at a new school. She doesn't fit in with the other kids. But her love of soccer wins her friends and a place on the indorr soccer team.

This is not what you expect. Yes it's a trip to the championships-the title is WINNERS after all- but the film has a great deal more going on including a look at friendship, the creation of a team, being a refugee, being a kid, families, war and a few other things. It's a film that has a lot going on but never loses it's way.

Actually this film is so packed with stuff that there was a point when I thought the film was done because there was a moment that waould have been the climax for any other film. Instead WINNERS just blew past it and kept going for another hour. I'm not complaining, rather I'm amazed that it never lagged. I was exhausted by the end but I was also misty because this film earns every emotion it squeezes out of us.

This film is glorious.

 An absolute must see when it plays at NYICFF this weekend- or where ever you can track it down.